Concern over environmental pollution has resulted in much activity by industries which manufacture coke to find a coke handling system that minimizes emissions of gaseous and particulate material into the surrounding atmosphere during the pushing cycle of a coke oven operation.
In a conventional quenching operation the quench car is moved along the battery on tracks in front of an oven and receives the hot coke contents of the oven and transports it to a quenching station where a quenching liquid is applied to the hot coke. The quenched coke is then moved to a coke wharf or coke receiving area where the quenched coke is discharged. The conventional quench car has a sloping bottom to aid in discharging the quenched coke and also has an open top. A coke guide is provided to direct the coke cake as it is pushed from the oven into the open top quench car.
Several difficulties arise from the conventional pushing and quenching operation which effect the control of emissions into the atmosphere and the quality of the coke produced. These difficulties include the inability of quench car operators to obtain a uniform and repeatable operation of a moving quench car so that a nearly constant corss-section of coke is obtained from one end of the car to the other. Quench car operators have found that synchronization of the rate of pushing of coke from a coke oven with the quench car movement is extremely difficult and the spread of the hot coke in the car varies from push to push as well as from operator to operator. The one spot car has been developed to overcome this difficulty, insuring the same coke configuration in the car time after time.
Hoods have been designed to cover the quench car and coke guide to capture much of the escaping pollutants. However, known hood designs have not successfully dealt with the infiltration of air into the hoods because of poor fit. Attempts to seal the areas of contact between the hood and car to reduce this infiltration have not been successful. Movement of the loaded quench car beneath the hood is restricted unless means is provided for first moving the hood out of the way.